


the better part of me

by wanderinglilly



Series: bellarke prompts [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, sassy lincoln is sassy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 21:09:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderinglilly/pseuds/wanderinglilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the one where Clarke and Bellamy broke up three months ago and were set up by Octavia and Lincoln because they suck without each other and it’s getting ridiculous.<br/>OR "A mutual friend of ours has this whole vision for their Black and White Photography final and we volunteered to be their models without knowing how sexual this shoot would turn out" AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the better part of me

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from OneRepublic’s “Come Home” because i am trash like that. I hope you enjoy it! The other prompt ("I let you have a few sheets of darkroom photo paper, to pay me back you offered to model privately for my Studio Photography assignment" AU) is going to be the continuation to this and will explain the title, so please bear with me if it doesn’t make any sense yet.

Lincoln has been waiting for her for fifteen minutes.  _If he’s still there_ , Clarke thinks to herself. She’s walking as fast as she can without spilling the very precious and not very cheap paints she’s carrying in her bag. Her partner on that project for Art History had wanted to discuss logistics on it and she’d been held up so long she doubts the man’s still in the studio they agreed to meet on. Though the giant of a guy is so kind he’d probably wait an hour before leaving.

Lincoln and her have been classmates since their first semester of Photography, and would have probably partnered on this project had they not had different concepts, she muses, for she’s making a study on the importance of selfies and Lincoln went for a more conventional, black and white concept. Because of that she agreed to be his model, and now she’s running very very late to the session they scheduled on last week’s photography class.

With a muttered curse and some clanking in her bag ( _her paints, oh stars_ ) she opens the door to the studio and finds not only Lincoln and a set, but also the last person she needs to see right now.

“Lincoln, what is he doing here?” she asks apprehensively. Behind her friend stands a tall guy, with tanned skin and curly hair: her ex-boyfriend, Bellamy Blake. Their relationship ended not three months ago, and it still hurts a ~~lot~~  little to see him, to see the man she  ~~loves~~  loved so calm and detached when she’s still trying to figure out how to put back together the pieces of her broken heart. “You didn’t tell me he was gonna be here.”

“What, would you have refused if he had, Princess?” he says, venom in his words. It’s so unfair that he gets to treat her like she didn’t want the relationship anymore but, in hindsight, it  _was_  her who ended it, so maybe she deserves it.

“Of course not,”she answers, never one to back down from a challenge, and Bellamy is damn good at throwing those at her. “but it would’ve been good to know.” Bellamy looks like he’s going to say something else, the burning look in his brown eyes getting under her skin and crawling into her soul, making her feel all kinds of uncomfortable, but Lincoln beats him to it.

“Bellamy, Clarke, so good of you to join us,” the man says, a slightly sarcastic tone to his last words (that’s new) ”you’re both going to be my models for my final, and I hope you’re going to be  _professional_ about it.” Clarke feels like a child getting a warning from her mother before she goes to a party, but her and Bellamy have never been good at behaving, and she supposes they had it coming. “I need you two to stand in front of this set” he says, gesturing to a set with a fluorescent green background “after I take the pictures i’m going to add a few backgrounds on the computer, but first I need to take your photos. Did you bring the clothes?” 

Both of them nod, having been asked (at least she was, so she guesses Bellamy was too) to bring an all-white change of clothes and an all-black one. She doesn’t get how this is going to work -she and Bellamy cannot be in a room together for more than half an hour without either fighting or making out with each other, which is why they have kept from meeting for the last three months. But she is instructed to change into the black clothes (pants and a t-shirt, for her) and go to the set.

In there, Lincoln -behind whom Bellamy trails after, dressed in a white button down and spotless white slacks and looking every bit the man she fell in love with- asks them to hold hands and look at each other (which, excuse you, is not hard to do at all) until he takes the picture -or pictures, since he kept them there so long he might as well have gotten a session’s worth of photos of them in the same posse.

It gets easier from there -and harder too. Bellamy’s eyes lose some of their burning anger after a while (only some though) and looking straight at him isn’t all that hard then. But on the other hand Lincoln’s requests keep getting steamier (”hold her waist -no, Bellamy, her waist, I thought you knew where that was since you, you know, used to spend a lot of time holding it” that got him a punch and made her laugh, so yay) and by the time Clarke changes onto the white outfit -the dress she wore to their first date, had she known she’d never brought it, but what’s done is done- Lincoln has got Clarke’s leg around Bellamy’s waist and their heads so close she can count the freckles on his nose and cheeks the way she used to do on the mornings when they’d spend the night together and she’d wake up before him. 

“Alright! Let’s take a break!” He finally says, a million photos and many uncomfortable situations later. Clarke goes to sit on a stool, covering her face with her hands and feeling like she could use some coffee. She’s about to voice this when Lincoln offers to go, and he’s gone before she can volunteer herself, leaving her alone with Bellamy.

A few minutes pass in utter silence, until he speaks.

“Set up?” he asks from the other side of the room, sitting on a crate.

“Set up.” she confirms. Bellamy chuckles in that deep, velvety way she fell for and she suddenly can’t remember why they broke up again.  _You were toxic for each other,_ she tells herself,  _you hardly spent a day without fighting_. “So what did Octavia offer you to come here?” Clarke asks, curious.

“There’s a conference in the Museum about the Roman Empire next week. I didn’t want to go alone.” he simply says, though she can hear the implied  _we were going to go together_  that he keeps quiet. She didn’t expect him to grow out of his love for all history-related thing in three months, but it sure as hell is refreshing to know that he hasn’t.

She makes a noise of acknowledgement, and they keep quiet after that. It starts to occur to her that Lincoln has been gone a while for someone who was just going out for coffee, and as she looks up to inform Bellamy of such a thing, she finds him standing in front of her, dangerously close. He crouches to be at eye-level with her.

“I miss you.” Bellamy whispers and, even though she wills herself not to, some tears dare well up in her eyes. She’s missed him so much too, and she tells him so.

“I miss you too Bellamy, don’t think that because I-”

“Then why did you break it off?” he interrupts, suddenly standing, with the burning look of anger back on his face, but also with unshed tears in his eyes. “We were fine, Clarke. We were happy!”

“Bellamy, we fought every day.” she tries to reason with him, but Bellamy is the kind of person who doesn’t give up, and she’s fought so hard to stay away, she doesn’t think she’s going to manage it this time.

“Of course we fought! That’s what couples do!” he counters, raising his voice. “Hell, Clarke, we  _met_  fighting each other, and we didn’t fight every day. Not for the things that mattered.” at this, he lowers his voice, looking not at her but at the floor, and she can’t say anything because he’s wrong but also so very right and she  _wants_  to believe they still have a chance. “Just…” he continues, looking up and in her eyes again. “Just give us another chance.”

Clarke won’t, she can’t, she’s so tired of all the fight but Bellamy’s suddenly even closer and he’s cradling her face with his hands and when his lips cover hers she loses all the will to fight against something, someone she was never going to beat anyway. Bellamy kisses her with all the pent up frustration and passion he’s held for her these past three months, and she kisses him back just as fiercely. Weaving her hand through his curly hair, Clarke lets herself be kissed and kiss back until she can’t breathe anymore and they have to part. It’s him who breaks the kiss, though, and she just hides her face in the crane of his neck the way she did the first time his sister ever found them together in his bed.

“Okay.” she murmurs against his skin. Bellamy shudders, but she can almost see the grin on his face. Looking at him again, she adds seriously. “But let’s take it slow this time.”

Bellamy throws his head back and laughs a loud sound, one that reverberates in his chest, making Clarke feel something akin’ to butterflies on her stomach. “Slow as a snail if you want, Princess.” he mumbles before he kisses her again.

From behind the door, Lincoln texts Octavia:

**_operation bellarke succeeded. see you at the apartment babe._ **


End file.
